�This is great news if you are a hotel owner,� Fox said, �But probably not so good if you�re a hotel guest.�

To go along with the 8.0 percent increase in average daily room rates over the first six months of 1999, occupancies increased 7.7 percent over the first half of last year.

JUNE 2000 SETS RECORDS, TOO

Hotels in June achieved the highest occupancies ever for a June in New York.  At 88.3 percent (coincidentally the same level as May 2000), they were about two percent higher than the prior record set in 1979, Fox reported. 

Average room rates for the month of June 2000 were $236.54 - an extraordinary 11.7 percent increase over June of 1999. 

Overall room sales for the month of June increased by 22.5 percent over 1999, while for the six-month period they increased �only� 18.1 percent, Fox pointed out. On a per-available-room basis, the first-half increase was 16.2 percent, while the increase for June alone was 20.3 percent, he added.

All of this was for the traditionally �slower� half of the year. Historically the second half of the year in New York City achieves occupancies and average room rates significantly above those of the first half. It may not be possible to reach second-half levels materially above these records of the first half.  But if rates and occupancies do no more than reach the same point, New York City will once again complete a truly record breaking-year, surpassing the previous record set in 1998, Fox said.

PKF Consulting has been tracking hotel rates and occupancies in New York City since the 1920s.

PKF Consulting is an international consulting and real estate firm specializing in the hospitality industry.  PKF Consulting, along with The Hospitality Research Group and hotel brokerage affiliate Hospitality Asset Advisors Incorporated are all wholly owned subsidiaries of Hospitality Asset Advisors International, a U.S. Corporation.  The firm has offices in New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Washington DC, Atlanta, Houston, Dallas, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Singapore.